The myth is rampant to be sure. Indeed, if you want
an interesting alternative perspective on what occurred,
check out the testimony and articles recently produced
by their boss - DARPA Director Steve Lukasik.

Furthermore, in the historical myth, neither the competition
with French researchers like Louis Pouzin, nor the massive
OSI CLNP Internet efforts get mentioned. Congress' coughing
up 5 billion dollars at the right moment in the development
cycle to enable free everything also did not hurt.

With that said, Vint and others on the team put a lot of
effort into working the standards scenes in adroit ways
to facilitate development and evangelization of tcp/ip
based platforms that is arguably similar to what Rich
is undertaking today. MITRE to give them credit, has also
been quite effective.

--tony

On 2015-06-12 4:26 AM, Trey Darley
wrote:

Hi, Tony -
1) While I admire Vint Cerf greatly (I have an autographed copy of of RFC4838 framed and hanging above my monitor as I compose this mail), his role in the creation of TCP/IP has been somewhat mythologized, in no small part due to the fact that he managed to outlive so many of his collaborators.
2) The fallacy in your line of argument is in overlooking the passing of time. TCP/IP was created in a polarized (Cold War) world. In a (comparatively) globalized world such as we inhabit today, do you _really_ believe TCP/IP would have been adopted as a global standard without a plurality of multinational leadership? I doubt it. Times, my friend, have changed, and profit we may by noting the fact.